Earnings Labs

NOV Inc. (NOV)

Q2 2024 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 26, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Q2 NOV, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Amie D'Ambrosio, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Amie D'Ambrosio

Analyst

Welcome, everyone, to NOV’s second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With me today are Clay Williams, our Chairman, President and CEO; and Jose Bayardo, our Senior Vice President and CFO. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of today’s comments are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. They involve risks and uncertainty, and actual results may differ materially. No one should assume these forward-looking statements remain valid later in the quarter or later in the year. For a more detailed discussion of the major risk factors affecting our business, please refer to our latest Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our comments also include non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the nearest corresponding GAAP measures are in our earnings release available on our website. On a U.S. GAAP basis, for the second quarter of 2024, NOV reported revenues of $2.22 billion and a net income of $226 million or $0.57 per fully diluted share. Our use of the term EBITDA throughout this morning’s call corresponds with the term adjusted EBITDA, as defined in our earnings release. Later in the call, we will host a question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to permit more participation. Now, let me turn the call over to Clay.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Thank you, Amie. NOV’s second quarter revenues of $2.2 billion increased 6% compared to the second quarter of 2023. As year-over-year double-digit growth in international markets and 6% growth in the offshore easily overcame a modest 1% decline in North American sales. The company posted fully diluted GAAP earnings for the second quarter of $0.57 per share, up $0.18 year-over-year, helped by gains from our divestiture of our Pole Products business during the quarter. Second quarter EBITDA improved 15% year-over-year to $281 million. Strong sequential EBITDA leverage of 66% was driven by the impact of cost reductions undertaken over the past several months, along with a pull-forward of some work and very good execution. Consolidated EBITDA margin of 12.7% improved sequentially and year-over-year due to the cost savings and rising margins in NOV’s revenue out of backlog, which accounted for about 25% of our revenue mix during the second quarter. Exploration in new offshore basins, greenfield and brownfield offshore development for both oil and gas, and international development of unconventional resources are emerging as the primary growth drivers for NOV, as the strength and duration of this cycle remains on display. Stable oil prices and strong long-term outlook for natural gas and LNG demand are supporting E&P investments in these. In fact, industry forecasts are calling for several additional final investment decisions, or FIDs, for big offshore projects following the significant ramp of the past three years, which are expected to drive sharply higher demand for offshore production assets like FPSOs. National oil companies or NOCs, have been clear about their higher spending plans to achieve ambitious goals to boost production. These trends have important implications for NOV’s business. For international land developments, E&P operators need better drilling, stimulation, and production equipment and technologies, like those developed and honed in…

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Thank you, Clay. NOV has consolidated the EBITDA and improved 15% year-over-year to $281 million, with margins improving 100 basis points to 12.7% of sales, reaching the highest level since 2015, supported by our $75 million cost-out program, which, as Clay mentioned, was substantially completed during the second quarter. Cash flow from operations was a healthy $432 million due to improvements in working capital and profitability. CapEx totaled $82 million, leading to free cash flow of $350 million and we continue to expect that we will convert over 50% of EBITDA to free cash flow for the year. Much improved cash flow realized in the second quarter reinforces our already strong confidence that NOV’s capital-light business model will generate substantial amounts of free cash flow over the coming years. Last quarter, we unveiled our return of capital framework that is aligned with our longstanding capital allocation priorities. As a reminder, priority one is to defend the balance sheet. As expected, during the second quarter, our net debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio fell below 1 and our gross debt leverage ratio remained below 2, meaning we now consider the balance sheet to be an optimal condition, which paves the way to return a large portion of our future cash generation to shareholders while maintaining adequate financial flexibility. Second, we aim to properly maintain our asset base and invest in organic growth opportunities that drive superior risk-adjusted returns. During the second quarter, the bulk of our $82 million in capital expenditures was invested in building out our ability to support more of our customers with our latest efficiency-enhancing tools, technologies and services. Next, we always want to remain opportunistic regarding acquisitions and can accelerate strategic growth initiatives at attractive returns. In the second quarter, we completed our acquisition of Keystone Tower Systems, which I’ll…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jim Rollyson from Raymond James.

Jim Rollyson

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, Clay and Jose.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Good morning, Jim.

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Good morning, Jim.

Jim Rollyson

Analyst

Obviously, pretty solid results and fantastic bookings, which I guess, we kind of expected some -- and benefit from the slippage. But, Clay, maybe you replaced more than 20% of your backlog in a quarter from new bookings, and obviously, we’ve been on this trajectory through conversation and results of margins embedded in backlog getting better. If I did the math correctly, you gave 3Q guidance, and if you kind of back into 4Q from the annual guidance, your EBITDA margins are moving into the 14%-plus range in 4Q. So, just maybe some color around that margin trajectory in backlog and kind of how backlog pricing is even trending in real time?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah. And as we’ve discussed before, Jim, at the bottom of the pandemic, we ended up with some frame agreements that weren’t as inflation-protected as we’d hoped and had more difficult payment terms and the like during a pretty soft time and those are -- we continue to deliver on those, but they’re becoming less and less of our revenue stream quarter-by-quarter, and we’re bringing in new work as we did this quarter that’s at much better terms and margins. And so, I’m very pleased to see that happen. And as Jose said, as we get into 2025 in particular, there’s a big one-- couple big ones that will dissipate and should help prompt additional margin expansion as we move through 2025 in a big way. So, yeah, we have been -- more broadly, we’ve been very focused on margins here. The $75 million cost out is certainly helping improvement of our -- and by the way, we have more to come. We’re not going to quantify that for you, but we’ve got a bunch of new leaders here coming out of our reorganization, and they’re looking at new ways to improve margins, very focused on locations that are underperforming actually with respect to return on capital for which margin is kind of a proxy, but I think that will help drive better margins in the future. So, yeah, our outlook is pretty strong. With respect to exit margins in Q4, yeah, I think right around that 14% range is kind of what we’re looking at at this point and so -- and expectation is that we set aside the seasonality. Q4 is usually our best quarter with respect to margin, that the company should see an upward trend on margins for the next few years given the strengths that we see in offshore and international.

Jim Rollyson

Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. Then kind of an interesting question that you prompted me with the slide. Just on the FPSO side, so if you believe some of the forecast, like Rystad has almost 50 incremental FPSOs in the next five years, and you’re talking about revenue opportunity of between $100 million and $700 million per FPSO depending on the size, scale, how far offshore, et cetera. But curious what your typical win rate is and I mean, that, those are pretty -- potentially pretty big numbers just in one small segment of what you do. So, just curious your view on that?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Well, yeah, each one of these is a competitive bidding situation, but we usually come into those with a really strong portfolio of technology. The biggest portions of that are around process systems, gas dehydration, seawater treatment processes, a lot of experience with a global leader in that area and modules that go into FPSOs to handle those fluids. We sell a lot of composite piping systems into those FPSOs for seawater fire suppression systems, for ballast systems and have a really strong market position with that. That’s in addition to cranes, to turret mooring systems, to offloading systems. Another very big piece of that is our position in subsea flexible pipe and that’s -- the company has a very strong reputation there. So, it’s several very strong business franchises that sell into that trend. And what I would tell you, though is, also too with respect to our participation in FPSOs is that, our wins on purchase orders is a little later than others out there in the space in that it’s more product-driven. And so, a lot of times, we won’t necessarily land purchase orders related to FPSOs until six months, 12 months, 18 months after FID, for instance. But what our customers are seeing now, particularly in the flexible pipe space, is very high utilizations of manufacturing plants, not just ours, but others around the world as well. So, that’s becoming an earlier item. They’re going to have to think through in their development project planning a little bit earlier in the process.

Jim Rollyson

Analyst

Excellent. Appreciate it. I’ll turn it back.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You bet.

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James West from Evercore.

James West

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, Clay, Jose?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Good morning, James.

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Good morning.

James West

Analyst

Guys, I had a question on land rigs, both domestic U.S. land rigs and then the fleet that’s being retooled and built for the international markets. So, I’m hearing a bit about some upgrades here and there in the U.S. Some of that’s software, of course, but there’s equipment upgrades and some changes to the rigs, and of course, there’s a total retooling of the fleet internationally. I wondered if you could, I know this is a pretty broad question, but if you could maybe bucket what are the leading kind of upgrades or changes or equipment asks on these new either upgraded rigs or the new rigs?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Well, that’s a great question, James. As you know, the appetite to spend a lot of capital is pretty limited by…

James West

Analyst

Yeah.

Clay Williams

Analyst

… North American land drillers and access to capital, cost of capital, that’s a factor in their level of appetite for new technologies. We sort of recognized this several years ago. So, our development focus around new technologies focused on land drilling have been around bike-sized ways to achieve a rig of the future type performance level with a reasonable sticker cost, if that makes sense. And we also recognized that digital technologies were going to be a big part of that and so that’s why we introduced our NOVOS operating system to support our rigs, which really opens up their operations to a lot of applications, some developed by NOV, some developed by others in a way that can really drive efficiency. So, I’ve been seeing a really good uptake on NOVOS. I think Jose quoted some really good numbers in a prepared remarks earlier about installed base. And what’s interesting about that, James, is that that provides a digital foundation for automation. So the other thing we’ve done is develop a very cost-effective way to bring robots to the rig floor and to the racking board and to really create truly a hands-free environment and a lot of buzz in the industry around that capability. And I would add, not just amongst drilling contractors who are excited about it because it helps them manage their workforce and creates higher levels of efficiency, but also amongst operators. And that’s really what we’re behind the scenes, who we’re really seeing drive demand for this. So, there’s a couple of major IOCs out there that have latched onto this technology and are talking to their drilling contractors about putting it to work, and that’s both land and offshore, I would add and so excited about that. That’s -- and so that’s, I think, kind of shaping what we see in North America around demand for technologies to improve drilling. If you go overseas, as I said in my prepared remarks, it’s interesting. The big rebuild of North American rig fleet that happened to move to AC technologies, quick move, fit for purpose, higher setback, higher mud pressure type rebuild, that never really happened in most international locations.

James West

Analyst

Right.

Clay Williams

Analyst

So, what we’re seeing now is NOC and operator preference for AC-powered rigs, some of these technologies that I mentioned, and that’s driving demand for those kinds of rigs in those marketplaces, most notably around the Middle East, but also interest in Latin America and a few other places.

James West

Analyst

Got it. That’s very helpful. And then, maybe a follow-up on the Keystone acquisition. We’ve obviously been watching your interest and your -- and the growth of that business, but it seems like you’re hitting a real clear milestone here and that, of course, led to the fully rolling the business in. I’m curious, the -- who are you replacing? What’s the competition? Who are the incumbents? And is there any technology like yours, like this spooling technology in the market?

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Yeah. Great question, James. And so, yeah, the -- obviously, there’s an instilled base of incumbents that have provided traditional wind towers, both land and offshore markets. And it’s a slow, heavy fabrication process that’s typically used. Design is not optimal in terms of what they’re delivering into the marketplace. And so, what you -- you’ve known us for a long time and our mission in life is to increase the efficiencies associated with the production of energy around the world. And we saw that there are better ways to do things in the renewable space. The renewable space was clearly in need of a lot of time and attention in terms of driving improved economics. Obviously, before us, the industry had done a great job bringing down costs through more standardized manufacturing processes and getting towers taller and going to bigger turbines. They were hitting a wall and our brilliant scientists and engineers put their hats on and tried to identify ways to further drive the improvement in economics. And while we were working on our own solutions, we came across this really smart group of individuals that had designed this technology, the spiral weld technology that not only allows you to manufacture wind turbine towers at a faster rate, but also using less steel so lower cost, faster production. And what we really got excited about was the longer term potential of building these plants in fields where you can more optimally design these tower sections. So, traditional wind tower that’s built right now to overcome the logistics of getting up and down the highway, even for the tower heights they’re building today, the bottom portion of the tower is using much thicker steel than you should. Ideally, you would have wider base with thinner steel would be much more efficient, plus you could go to much taller heights. If you build the tower sections in the field and assemble in the field, you can overcome that issue, have an optimally designed tower and go to much higher heights and utilize bigger turbines, bigger blades, drive much better economics. So, obviously, our first foray here is to prove out the technology, which we’ve done. We have sold commercial sections out of our plant, our fixed plant in Pampa, Texas. We’re working really hard to scale up those operations to begin making deliveries under this new contract in mid-2025. And then we’ll see where the business takes us, but as I mentioned, we’re really excited about those infield manufacturing plants that will come at some point in the future.

James West

Analyst

Great. Fascinating. Thanks, guys.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You bet. Thanks, James.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram from JPMorgan.

Arun Jayaram

Analyst

Yeah. Good morning. Clay, I wondered if you can kind of …

Clay Williams

Analyst

Good morning.

Arun Jayaram

Analyst

Good morning. Clay, I was wondering if you could elaborate on some of the tailwinds from the organizational wide re-segmentation. You talked about some new leaders. You’ve gone to two segments from three.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah.

Arun Jayaram

Analyst

And maybe just an update on where we’re at with the $75 million cost-out and so maybe -- you signaled maybe there’s more to come on that front?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah. Thanks, Arun. Yeah. So, as you know, I think, it was about this time last year we announced a cost-out program, $75 million. That follows a couple other larger ones that we executed prior that involved that re-segmentation and reorganization. We ended up with a bunch of new business unit leaders here and had some terrific long-serving employees retire and leave us, but a lot of fresh faces and fresh perspectives and new eyes on opportunities. So, we continue to execute that plan that was developed under the prior regime, if you will. But now as we are -- here we are in the middle of 2024 and they’re coming up with additional opportunities. So, some specifics around that would include things like more centralized manufacturing organizations and some re-engineering opportunities on supply chain, folding in some of these new technologies like I talked about in the prepared remarks, utilizing AI to monitor our machine tools, for instance. And it also involves a process that we’re going through with these new leaders to take a fresh look at all of our locations and operations around the world and analyze these from a return on capital standpoint. And so I think there will be continued rationalization. And so that’s underway. It will continue a while. And as you know, probably, better than most, we’ve been doing a lot of rationalization and a lot of cost reductions here for really the past decade. And so, a lot of the easy things have been done. These are all higher degree of difficulty type things, but I think we’re going to continue to get better and more efficient. That’s going to, as I said, be a bit of a tailwind on margins going forward.

Arun Jayaram

Analyst

Great. My follow-up is I’m wondering, Clay, if you could comment on what you’re seeing in terms of the rig reactivations, recertifications kind of process, and maybe you could touch on the potential impact to NOV from some of the offshore rig consolidation activity we’ve seen more recently?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah. I think -- yeah, we saw a pretty good ramp on rig reactivations from 2022 into 2023. It continues to grow. And it’s a combination of bringing in our engineers to survey the rigs, figure out what they need to do the special purpose survey work that’s required typically every five years for those rigs and in many cases to replace equipment, upgrade equipment. It’s kind of an opportunity. Those rigs go into a shipyard to get everything done that they need to get done and they’re suffering kind of the opportunity cost of not drilling during that time. And so that’s been a good tailwind to our business. What we’re seeing in that process is that, the industry is very rational and so the first rigs to go back to work are the cheapest and easiest to reactivate that will do the job. And as the industry looks to put more and more rigs back to work, the cost per rig is going up. And so we certainly benefited from that and we continue to. What I would tell you is, despite the fact that we’re very busy, there’s a lot of I think we’re 30-something rigs in shipyards now that are getting reactivated, there’s still a lot that could be. And so there are, I think, seven floaters out there that were being constructed and the construction operations were suspended in the downturn through the past decade, plus another 25 that are cold stack, and then, sorry, 14 floaters and then seven jackups that were being constructed that were suspended, and another 39 that were cold stack. Those are all potentially rigs that could be reactivated that we could benefit from. Now, to be completely candid, probably lots of those, it’s not cost-effective to reactivate them and parties needing a rig might look at newbuild at some point along the way, but there’s still opportunity for that to grow and we’re delighted to be helping our customers make that happen. With respect to the consolidation in the offshore, we know all parties and all parties have NOV equipment, and I don’t -- I am not -- I don’t think ownership of that equipment is going to drive the needle one direction or the other, quite frankly. We’ve got great relationships and strong relationships with our very near and dear friends in the offshore drilling space, and look forward to continuing to support their operations and drive better efficiency through their operations.

Arun Jayaram

Analyst

Thanks, Clay.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You bet. Thanks, Arun.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Marc Bianchi from TD Cowen.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

Hey. Thanks. I’d like to start by following up on AJ’s question there about the aftermarket services. One of the things that I think has been a …

Clay Williams

Analyst

Okay.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

Thanks. I think one of the things that I think has been a big benefit over the past couple of years is the special survey work, which I think, if we sort of map out when these rigs were delivered, would suggest maybe there’s a challenging comp when you get to 2025. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, is there a slug of revenue that goes away in 2025 and we could see maybe the aftermarket service have a little bit of a headwind related to that?

Clay Williams

Analyst

With respect to the special purpose survey portion of that, Marc, we don’t really see it, and the reason for that is there have been sort of multiple generations of offshore rigs delivered. There were a lot of -- that’s kind of -- it’s coming out of the super cycle, let’s say, 2008, 2009, 2010, around the deliveries and then again in 2011, 2012, 2013, and then when the music stopped, let’s say at the end of 2014, a lot of construction projects underway around the world and rigs continue to be delivered and those have kind of been spread out over time, but also, too, these rigs have to come in every five years, and what I would tell you is the 10-year SPS for a rig typically is a bigger ticket item than the five-year SPS, and the 15-year SPS is typically a bigger ticket than the 10-year SPS, if that makes sense. And so that sort of diversity of, let’s call them birthdays, plus the fact that some rigs have been interrupted from COVID and other downturns in the industry, let’s say, plus the fact that not all SPSs are kind of equal opportunity for NOV kind of levels that out more. The key driver for us is the fact that the offshore fleet broadly is going back to work, and the offshore fleet broadly has already cannibalized everything they can cannibalize. And so a healthier level of activity and not having to compete with an overhang of excess supply of spare parts and equipment that can be repurposed is the main driver for NOV’s business. Does that make sense?

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

No. It makes perfect sense and I hope that my birthday parties that I’m paying for over the next few years don’t go up and up and up, but we’ll see.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

No. I was referring to my kids. In terms of the order outlook here, so for…

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

I think I heard you say, Clay, in your prepared remarks, you’d expect greater than one book-to-bill in the second half, and I just want to make sure that that was what I caught, or were you referring to…

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yes.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

… just a portion of the orders? Okay. And I think, Jose, you mentioned a couple of wind insulation vessels that are kind of in the pipeline and could be awarded. Do you need those to convert to greater than one book-to-bill or do you think you can get there without those one-offs?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Well, they would help. There are paths to get there without that support, as we always do, and you’re well aware of this, Marc. But these things are big and lumpy, and so -- and that’s part of the reason we’re hesitant to get a lot of order guidance, but I would tell you, there’s multiple ways to get to book-to-bill north of 1. And as we always see in any quarter, six-month period, we land certain orders and we miss certain orders and so -- but the general feel we’re getting from our operations people is the outlook is pretty good for the next couple of quarters on demand. And then longer term, our view on offshore is very constructive and international is very constructive, and so that’ll be the driver for future orders.

Marc Bianchi

Analyst

Yeah. Super. Thank you very much. I’ll turn it back.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You bet. Thanks, Marc.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Luke Lemoine from Piper Sandler.

Luke Lemoine

Analyst

Good morning, Clay.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Good morning, Luke. We’re having a hard time hearing you. Oh, there you are. Good.

Luke Lemoine

Analyst

Okay.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Go ahead.

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Luke, good morning.

Luke Lemoine

Analyst

Yeah. You had good orders here in 2Q in Energy Equipment, and you talked about book-to-bill being above 1x in the second half of the year, and I know it’s kind of early days, but just kind of a broader NOV, might be difficult to do without quantifying, but could you just help us kind of frame how you see 2025 shaking out in your broad outlook as of now?

Clay Williams

Analyst

Yeah. We’re hesitant to quantify this beyond kind of thematically and directionally. We feel good that international and offshore, that that cycle in both areas is going to have some legs. NOV’s going to be a critical participant in that and so that’s going to carry us into a much better year in 2025, better margins, better demand. To me, the wild card is North America, and there’s a lot of discussion out there about the potential impact of gas drilling returning to North America, higher LNG takeaway capacity that would help operators’ economics a lot and then the completion of integration activities between all of the E&Ps that are merging, and kind of getting back to work would help a lot. But that’s -- to me that’s the biggest wild card that we see out there right now is North America. But I think on the whole, I think the combination of offshore and international winds and dominates in that helps more than offsets any continued pressure we see here in North America. I don’t know if you’ve got anything to add to that, Jose.

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

No. Maybe the only other thing I would add is, absolutely agree with everything that Clay just said. North America is the real wild card. Things continue to look really good from an international offshore standpoint. Obviously, the backlog has been representative of that. But just to add a little bit more onto North America, I think that has a big potential effect with a small increase in activity we think can drive outsized demand for capital equipment in the North American marketplace. So, hopefully, we’re near a bottom in terms of overall activity and we’re not -- certainly not counting on a big uptick, but even a modest uptick into 2025, we think will drive additional demand for capital equipment. And so, it sort of feels like there’s a big overhang of completion equipment that’s out there, but we would argue that things are tighter than they appear. We’re still delivering new frac units. And really that’s a result of how hard this equipment has been working out in the field and really the real limited capacity that really exists just from an age and usability standpoint. So, again, at these levels, we’re not anticipating certainly heroic bookings for North America for completion equipment, but a little pickup absorbing the capacity that’s out there, and I think will cause a lot of demand for new equipment as a lot of the tired stuff just needs to be replaced going forward.

Luke Lemoine

Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thanks much.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Thanks, Luke. You bet.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Gengaro from Stifel.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst

So, two quick ones from me. Just first on the cash flow side, obviously, free cash flow is strong in the quarter. Maybe for, Jose, when we think about the rest of the year and you kind of think about the journey you’ve been on recently to get to this point and the confidence level in free cash generation, how should we think about sort of just the key components of it over the next couple quarters? And I imagine your confidence level is clearly increasing here on cash generation over the next couple years?

Jose Bayardo

Analyst

Yeah. Absolutely, Stephen. So, look, a couple of quarters ago we started to have really strong conviction that we had turned the quarter -- turned the corner, and then for the next several years, we would start throwing off really meaningful levels of free cash flow, and that’s obviously what we’re able to demonstrate here in the second quarter into a smaller effect, frankly, back in Q4 of last year. So we’re in a great place, but just like orders, free cash flow can be lumpy as well depending on the time of deliveries, on when we collect certain receivables, when we hit specific milestone payments. And so, the guidance is still the same as it has been, which is that we will convert at least 50% of our EBITDA to free cash flow during the year. I think we got a little bit of a pull forward into Q2, so expect a decent step down into Q3, and then as usual, another strong free cash flow quarter in the fourth quarter. And as we go forward beyond 2024, as I’ve said before, don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t continue to generate free cash flow at a rate that’s sort of equal to or better than that 50% of our EBITDA. So I feel really great about things. Obviously, we’ve been working on working capital. There’s more opportunity on that front in terms of where the cash comes from, but also just obviously higher levels of profitability drive more free cash even without a material movement in our working capital balances. So things look really good from a free cash flow standpoint that will ultimately translate into what we return to our shareholders.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst

Great. No. That’s very helpful. And the other just quick question, just from a macro perspective, you talked a little bit about North America land and the uncertainty next year. In your view, and you guys have looked at this a long time, what do you think needs to happen? I mean, do you think it’s just the M&A kind of pause that’s creating some of the apprehension along with gas prices? Do you think there’s anything else at work which is kind of leading to maybe lower activity than at least we would have thought at this point of the year?

Clay Williams

Analyst

That’s a really good question. Certainly gas would help a lot. I think gas has taken a big toll. Even liquids producers have exposure to gas prices and that’s affected activity here. Beyond that, in terms of what kind of lights up the North American rig count again now. I’m not sure I have a good guess as to what that might be other than to just point out the fact that this is a very, very creative and entrepreneurial group of producers here in North America and man, they always seem to come up with something. And 20 years ago it looked like North America was continuing to drift down and had its best days were in the rear view mirror and then all of a sudden you have the shale revolution here. I don’t know what the next revolution looks like, but I can tell you there’s an awful lot of smart people in the E&P community focused on making that happen. In terms of our -- what would help us a lot is our customers here in North America have gotten really good at capital discipline and have really limited their expenditures on new technology. We’re continuing to try to figure out what’s next in that space, and as I mentioned earlier, I think higher levels of automation in drilling and there’s some IOC, some major oil company senior leaders who share that vision. And so, I’m pretty excited about the opportunity in front of us to help lift the automation and the digital tools that are used to optimize drilling across rigs all across the U.S. and North America. And the drillers here, I’m sure they’re going to do it again this quarter, talk about improving efficiency and continue to get better at what they do, and so we’re looking for opportunities to help support them do that.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst

Excellent. Yeah. Thanks for the call.

Clay Williams

Analyst

You bet. Thank you, Stephen.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Clay Williams for closing remarks.

Clay Williams

Analyst

Thanks, Fiji. We appreciate everyone joining us this morning and we look forward to sharing our third quarter results with you in October. I hope you have a great day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.